By Patty Enrado, Editor
CHICAGO — Financial systems are changing as healthcare costs shift to consumers and guarantors, forcing providers to learn a new way of doing business. The biggest changes are the movement to electronic payment and the focus on front-end versus back-end processes, said Pam Matthews, senior director of Healthcare Information Systems at HIMSS.
Healthcare IT is enabling the move to e-processes and helping providers to manage the way business is now being conducted, she said.
HIMSS is unique in the industry because of its ability to pull all the stakeholders together, including banks and clearing houses, and help them adjust to their changing roles, Matthews said.
In 2008 the HIMSS revenue cycle taskforce focused on best practices of IT standards for major health systems, said Jill Rumberger, assistant professor at Penn State University and taskforce chair. This year, a taskforce subgroup is replicating best practices for the ambulatory setting.
“We need to focus on helping health systems understand the justification for changing to best-practices methodology around performance metrics for the revenue cycle area,” she said. It requires investments in healthcare IT to support best practices. The combination of best practices and healthcare IT improve health systems’ ability to collect funds and reduce bad debt and debt collection efforts. The taskforce will focus on helping health systems understand what current best practices are for high-performing, IT-supported organizations.
HIMSS09 will present its all-day Financial Systems Symposium, “Show Me the Money,” on Saturday, April 4. The Symposium will address important issues in revenue cycle management in the current economy and where health systems can go, said Rumberger.
Matthews said that today’s financial systems go beyond revenue cycle management. The symposium will feature breakout sessions that address, among other issues, the new Administration’s healthcare agenda and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ initiatives.
A special panel will comprise all the stakeholders touching the financial systems, including payers, providers and clearing houses, and lead discussions on the new roles of stakeholders and adjustments to those drastic changes.
“We start the conversation on why it’s difficult for providers to move to e-payment and offer new approaches to help facilitation and achievement of e-payment,” Matthews said.